The Psychologist, August 2010

psychologistthe

august 2010vol 23 no 8

Computers andthe mindPadraic Monaghan and colleagueson what we have learnt

attentional bias and addiction 636identity among British Muslim gay men 640feeling the blues 648psychologists in the family justice system 650

£5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society

forum 618news 624

careers 678looking back 694

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments

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vol 23 no 8 august 2010

Managing Editor Jon SuttonAssistant EditorPeter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson Staff journalistChristian Jarrett AdvertisingSarah StaintonCarl BourtonEditorial Assistant Debbie James

The PsychologistPolicy CommitteeDavid Lavallee (Chair),Nik Chmiel, OliviaCraig, Helen Galliard,Jeremy Horwood,Catherine Loveday,Stephen McGlynn,Sheelagh Strawbridge,Henck van Bilsen,Peter Wright, andAssociate Editors

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psychologistthe

august 2010vol 23 no 8

Computers and the mind Padraic Monaghan, James Keidel,Mike Burton and GertWestermann investigate whatpsychologists have learnt by usingcomputational models 642

‘I’ve…seen things you peoplewouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’vewatched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those…moments…will be lost intime, like…tears...in rain. Time to die.’

Impressively ‘human’ last words,from android Roy Batty in 1982’sBladerunner. Science fiction, butconsidered by many then – andindeed much earlier, in Alan Turing’s1950s – as the future of computing.Yet in 2010 we are still waiting fortruly effective computer models that can even translate betweenlanguages sensibly, or identify facesaccurately. Thankfully, the failure ofartificial intelligence models tomatch human performance providesus, as psychologists, with insight intothe way in which the mind is actuallysolving these tasks (see p.642).

Also, don’t miss Ron Roberts‘Looking back’ on the enduringrelevance of Thomas Szasz (p.694).

Dr Jon Sutton (Managing Editor)

THE ISSUE

Can’t take my eyes off of youMatt Field, winner of the Society’sSpearman Medal, on attentional bias in addiction and anxiety disorders

Identity threat among British Muslimgay menRusi Jaspal on the challenges faced bythose viewing sexual identities through a religious lens

Feeling the bluesGareth Morris looks at place attachmentand identity in a musical genre

Let’s play happy familiesSolicitor Richard Gregorian argues foran interdisciplinary approach to helpthose in the family justice system

forum 618diversity in clinical training; unnatural beliefs; psychopathy; and much more

media 634

636

640

648

650

beyond the stereotypes of psychologists, with Lucy Maddox

society 658underperformance, glib excess and psychopathy in the President’s column; new journals partnership and online news service; forensic news; and more

678

640

648

helping the helpers, with Lisa Lim Ah Ken; animal behaviour counselling, withAnne McBride; the latest jobs, and how to advertise

looking back 694the continuing relevance of Thomas Szasz, with Ron Roberts

one on one 696…with Gill Aitken

news, digest and analysis 624financial crisis; birthday honours; educational neuroscience; Rhona Flin onDeepwater Horizon; nuggets from the Society’s Research Digest; and more

book reviews 654emotion regulation; great myths in psychology; oppositional defiant disorder;discovering research methods; and the mindfulness solution

careers

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630 vol 23 no 8 august 2010

On 20 April 2010 there was a blow-out and explosion on theDeepwater Horizon drilling rig in

the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11workers and created the worst oil spillever experienced by the USA. A majorinvestigation and congressional hearingare now under way in an attempt todiscover the cause of the accident and toevaluate the adequacy of the response. Asour American colleagues are nowdiscussing at www.siop.org, whatcontribution might psychology make toour understanding of this type of oilindustry accident?

Industrial psychologists have beenstudying worker well-being and safety inthe UK and Norwegian sectors of theEuropean offshore oil and gas industrysince the mid-1980s (see Flin & Slaven,1996; Hellesøy, 1985). The North Seaplatforms and rigs operate in remote,hostile locations, on top of hazardous oiland gas wells containing high-pressurehydrocarbons. Each installation is crewedby a hundred or more technical andsupport staff, working 12-hour shifts,typically on a 14- to 21-day offshorerotation, with no rest days during theoffshore period. In a rare journalisticaccount of this workplace, Alvarez (1986)wrote: ‘The oil installations are strange inthe same way as the awkward, seeminglypatched together contraptions NASA putsinto orbit are strange. And the jobs inturn, are so complex that, to the outsider,the ingenuity required to do them seemslike magic.’

This unusual industry was not easy toaccess for psychological research 25 yearsago. The problem was not just the remotelocations or the need to undertakehelicopter underwater survival trainingbefore travelling offshore. In the UK, themain barrier was the lack of interest fromthe oil companies in having theirworkforce studied, especially onpsychosocial topics. The early explorationand production phase had beencharacterised by extremely innovativeengineering successes to find the subseahydrocarbons and to design the hugeplatforms that would extract them. Thesolving of technical challenges was thepriority and of course, the industry wasalmost entirely staffed by engineers.Although there were some early studiesexamining occupational stress(Sutherland & Cooper, 1986; Sutherland& Flin, 1989), the human element inoffshore operations did not seem to behigh on the research agenda. This was notpeculiar to the North Sea. House (1985),a Canadian researcher, wrote: ‘Worldwide,there have been few systematicinvestigations of the offshore oil industryand its impact upon oil workers and theirfamilies. The dearth of empirical materialhas not been due to the lack of interest byresearchers, nor even primarily, by a lackof available funding. Rather, the maincause has been the successful resistanceof the offshore petroleum industry tohave itself investigated and the reluctanceof most governments that it be studiedagainst its will.’

Then everything changed. In July1988 the Piper Alpha oil platform in theNorth Sea, situated 120 miles from theScottish coast, suffered an explosion andfire, killing 165 of the crew, plus tworescuers. This was one of Britain’s worstindustrial disasters and a large-scalepublic inquiry ensued. A primary cause ofthe accident was a failure to transferessential information about a pumpbetween the day shift and the night shift.Unfortunately the emergency response onPiper Alpha platform and its adjacentplatforms was problematic, leading toquestions about thecompetence of the offshoremanagers to take commandin a crisis. Underlyingfactors influencing both thesafety management and thecommand of the emergencywere linked to anorganisational culture inthe operating company thatappeared to prioritiseproduction more thansafety. None of thesedeficiencies was going to beremedied by engineeringsolutions.

Lord Cullen’s influentialreport (1990) made 106recommendations, forregulation, management,technical operations andprocedures. It was clearthat a greaterunderstanding of humanbehaviour would have tobe factored in to manyaspects of the new safetymanagement documentsthat the oil companies werebusy writing. Suddenlythere were requests forpsychological input. Webecame involved in two research projectsfunded by the newly created OffshoreSafety Division of the Health and SafetyExecutive, both addressing problemsidentified in Lord Cullen’s report into thedisaster.

Alvarez, A. (1986). Offshore: A North Seajourney. London: Sceptre.

Bryden, R., Flin, R., Vuijk, M. et al. (2006).Holding up the leadership mirrorthen changing the reflection. InProceedings of the 8th SPE Conferenceon Health, Safety and Environment inOil and Gas Exploration andProduction, Abu Dhabi, April.Richardson, TX: Society of PetroleumEngineers.

Cullen, D. (1990). The Public Inquiry intothe Piper Alpha Disaster. Vols. I & II.London: HMSO.

Flin, R. (1996). Sitting in the hot seat.Leaders and teams for critical incidentmanagement. Chichester: Wiley.

Flin, R., Mearns, K., Gordon, R. &Fleming, M. (1996). Risk perceptionsby offshore workers on UK oil andgas platforms. Safety Science, 22,131–145.

Flin, R. & Slaven, G. (1995). Identifyingthe right stuff. Selecting and trainingon-scene commanders. Journal ofContingencies and Crisis Management,3, 113–123.

Flin, R. & Slaven, G. (Eds.) (1996).Managing the offshore installationworkforce. Tulsa, OK: PennWell.

Flin, R., Slaven. G. & Stewart, K. (1996).Emergency decision making in theoffshore oil industry. Human Factors,

38, 262–277. Hellesøy, O. (1985). Work environment

Statfjord Field. Oslo:Universitetsforlaget.

House, D. (1985). Working offshore. StJohn’s Institute of Social andEconomic Research, Memorial Uni.

Hudson, P. (2007). Implementing safetyculture in a major multinational.Safety Science, 45, 697–722.

Mearns, K., Whitaker, S. & Flin, R. (2001).

refe

renc

es

Deepwater Horizon and beyond

Rhona Flin, Professor of Applied Psychology, Industrial PsychologyResearch Centre, University of Aberdeen

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The first project was to examine theselection, training and competenceassessment of the offshore installationmanagers who were in charge of theseplatforms and rigs, with particularreference to their ability to take commandin an emergency. This necessitated visitsto organisations such as military,emergency services, airlines and NASA tolearn how they selected, trained andassessed the competence of their incidentcommanders. Despite domain differences,they all sought similar characteristics andskill sets. Much use was made of both

high-fidelity simulation to discover whohad the ‘right stuff’ to take command instressful, risky situations. What theylooked for was leadership, stressresistance and the ability to takeautocratic decisions rapidly in uncertain

conditions. Beyond those attributes, theywere not concerned with a particularpersonality profile but wantedcommanders with awareness of their ownstrengths and weaknesses (Flin & Slaven,1995).

It transpired that very little wasdocumented about these processes andthe collated information became a bookcalled Sitting in the Hot Seat (Flin, 1996).This also discussed the availablepsychological evidence on key skillsrelating to situation assessment, decisionmaking, leadership and stress

management. Classical decision researchhad minimal relevance for these high-pressure domains where life-savingdecisions had to be made in minutes.But the emerging science of naturalisticdecision making, where psychologistswere studying fire fighters, militarycommanders and airline pilots(Zsambok & Klein, 1997), offered anecological validity that could be appliedto the offshore domain. The oil industryintroduced simulator training andassessment for the offshore managers,which enabled studies of their decisionmaking that confirmed the importanceof practice in quickly assessing asituation with little time for consideringoptions (Flin, Slaven et al., 1996).

Following Lord Cullen’s report, theoil companies were required to producesafety cases for each installation,showing the regulator that the hazardshad been identified, risks quantified andmeasures put in place for risk control.There was a flurry of activity across theindustry to conduct quantitative riskassessments. But what also had to betaken into account was how theworkforce perceived these risks, andthis was the basis of our second project.

Collaborating with Norwegianpsychologist, Torbjørn Rundmo fromTrondheim University, Kathryn Mearnsand I began to design risk perceptionquestionnaires for the offshore workforce(Flin, Mearns et al., 1996). What becameapparent was that workers were in factaware of the hazards. What we needed to


news

explain was why they actually took risks.What was driving unsafe behaviours? Ourrisk-perception questionnaires evolvedinto safety-climate surveys which showedthat managers and supervisors were keyinfluences on the patterns of behaviourthat were accepted at the worksites(Mearns et al., 2001). Risk perceptionswere important, but motivational factorsand expectancies were also playing apowerful role in workplace safety. Severalstudies of supervisors and site managersensued, showing that transformationalleadership styles could be linked to saferbehaviours on both oil platforms and oiltankers.

But it was not only the site managerswho influenced safety. The offshoreworkforce knew all too well that sitemanagers were directed by more seniormanagers onshore. There was a degree ofscepticism as to the safety priorities of thetop managers. This was found acrosscompanies, but in one of them, the CEOof exploration and production wassufficiently concerned to trigger aprogramme of work to develop anupward appraisal tool for senior managersto be assessed on their safety commitmentby the managers who reported to them.Confidential reports were provided toeach manager showing the contrastbetween self and upward ratings, thenaggregated data were presented to groupsof managers so that areas where they werenot demonstrating safety commitment tosubordinates could be addressed (Brydenet al., 2006). This approach wassubsequently extended to hundreds ofmanagers across the company’sinternational sites and the rating tool,‘Seeing Yourself as Others See You’ is nowavailable on the web(www.energyinst.org.uk/heartsandminds).Other psychologists, such as JamesReason and Dianne Parker fromManchester University with PatrickHudson from Leiden University, alsodeveloped safety tools for the oil industry(see Hudson, 2007), several of which areon this website.

Currently the Energy Institute issponsoring research by one of our PhDstudents, Isabella Roger (2010), who isendeavouring to identify the leadershipbehaviours of strategic managers thatinfluence organisational safety. As anyonewho watched the questioning of BP CEO,Tony Hayward at the congressionalhearing into the Deepwater Horizondisaster will realise, it is not only thebehaviour of the oil industry workers thatis about to be scrutinised in the monthsto come. And this time it will be lawyersdoing the investigation rather thanpsychologists.

Benchmarking safety climate inhazardous environments. RiskAnalysis, 21, 771–786.

Roger, I., Flin, R., Mearns, K. &Hetherington, C. (2010). Leadingsafely: Development of a safetyleadership tool for senior managers.In Proceedings of the 10th SPEConference on Health, Safety andEnvironment in Oil and Gas Explorationand Production, Rio de Janeiro, April.

Richardson, TX: Society of PetroleumEngineers.

Sutherland, K. & Flin, R. (1989). Stress atsea. Occupational stress in theoffshore oil and fishing industries.Work & Stress, 3, 269–285.

Sutherland, V. & Cooper, C. (1986). Manand accidents offshore. London: Lloyds.

Zsambok, C. & Klein, G. (Eds.) (1997).Naturalistic decision making. Mahwah,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.



The hungrier an animalbecomes, the more risks it’sprepared to take in the searchfor food. Now, for the first time,Mkael Symmonds andcolleagues at University CollegeLondon have shown that ouranimal instinct to maintain a balanced metabolic stateinfluences our decision makingin other contexts, includingfinance.

Nineteen male participantsperformed the same gamblingtask on three occasions, a weekapart: either after a 14-hourfast; immediately after eating a standard 2000-calorie meal;or one hour after eating a 2000-calorie meal. The task simplyrequired participants to chooserepeatedly between pairs ofgambles, one of which wasalways riskier but morelucrative than the other.

The immediate effect of the meal was to neutralise risk aversion. For the men withmore adipose tissue and higherbaseline levels of leptin (ahormone that suppressesappetite), who are generallymore risk averse, this meantthey became less risk aversewhen performing the task rightafter eating. By contrast, formen with less adipose tissueand lower leptin levels, who aregenerally low risk averse, theirrisk aversion was increasedimmediately after eating, just asyou would expect based on thebehaviour of hungry animals.

An hour after eating givestime for hormonal effects tokick in. As expected, men who

reported feeling less hungry an hour after eating, and whose levels of acyl-ghrelin (a hormone that increasesappetite) in the bloodstream hadfallen, played the gamblinggame in more cautious fashion.‘This parallels findings inforaging animals,’ Symmondstold the Digest, ‘where changesin metabolic state promotechanges in behaviour tomaintain or reach a metabolicbenchmark (to take more risk ifintake rate is relatively low, andless risk if intake is relativelyhigh), but here we see the effectin the economic domain.’

The researchers said theirfindings have implications forunderstanding the behaviour of dieters, the obese and peoplewith eating disorders. ‘Prandialghrelin suppression is reducedin obesity,’ Symmonds and hisco-authors wrote. ‘Thus wepredict greater risk-seeking in obese individuals followingfeeding, augmented by largerimmediate post-prandial effectson risk taking due to higherbaseline adiposity.’

The authors claim that this mechanism may underpin a component of the aberrantdecision making seen in obeseindividuals, including impulsivityand reward-seeking behaviour.‘We also predict profoundeffects on decision-making forindividuals operating at very lowbaseline energy reserves, andnote such an explanation hasbeen invoked to explainincreased impulsivity in anorexianervosa.’

How hunger affects our economic decision making under risk

In PLoS One (see http://bit.ly/cpuqvo)

DIGE

ST

Good, bad and thegarden of language Imagine a garden filled with sweet-smelling flowers andweeds. The flowers vastly outnumber the weeds, but the latterare more varied. And there’s another asymmetry – whereas theflowers have a pleasant scent, the weeds aren’t just scentless,they’re poisonous, they can kill. According to a new study, life islike this garden. Positive events outnumber negative events,but negative events are more varied and potent. Paul Rozin andcolleagues say that the English language reflects this state ofaffairs and so do at least 20 other languages.

Rozin’s team began by analysing a corpus of 100 millionwords of spoken and written English and found that positivewords are used far more often than negative words – just as

you’d expect if positive events are morecommon (to take one example, ‘good’ ismentioned 795 times per million wordscompared with 153 mentions per millionfor ‘bad’).

Moreover, the researchers say we’veadopted a number of habits of conveniencethat reflect the frequent use of positivewords in our language (in turn reflectingthe greater frequency of positivity in theworld). For example, positive words tend tobe ‘unmarked’ – that is, the positive is thedefault (e.g. ‘happy’) whereas the negativeis achieved by adding a negating prefix (i.e.‘unhappy’). Rozin cites four more suchhabits. Here’s one more: when stating pairsof good and bad words together, it’s nearlyalways the convention to mention thepositive word first: as in ‘good and bad’ and‘happy and sad’ rather than the other wayaround.

Turning to the dark side, the greatervariety of negative events in the world isalso reflected in English usage. Manywords referring to negative states or

situations don’t have an opposite: for example, ‘sympathy’ (i.e.there is a word for caring about another’s misfortune, but noword to describe taking pleasure at another’s good fortune),‘murderer’ (there’s no word for ‘giver of life’), ‘accident’, etc.

To see if these patterns are reflected in other languages,Rozin’s team interviewed the speakers of 20 languages, fromArabic to Brazilian Portuguese to Cantonese. Overwhelmingly,the patterns found for English also applied in these otherlanguages. For instance, for eight sample adjectives, including‘pleasant’, ‘dirty’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘pure’, it was the conventionin 83.9 per cent of cases across all 20 languages for the positiveword to be stated first alongside its negative opposite.Likewise, the negative-situation words ‘sympathy’, ‘murderer’,‘risk’, and ‘accident’ nearly always lacked a positive opposite.

‘We hope that this study calls the attention of emotionresearchers to some interesting and widespread valencedbiases in the use of language,’ the researchers said. ‘We believethese biases are adaptive responses to asymmetries in theworld, as it interacts with organisms.’

In the April issue ofCognition and Emotion

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digest

Look at a person’s photo and it’stempting to think you can seetheir personality written all overit: stony-faced individualsappear sombre; others flashinga big, toothy grin seem moregenial. An intriguing new studyclaims that these smiles are areliable marker of underlyingpositive emotion, and as suchare predictive of a person’slongevity.

Ernest Abel and MichaelKruger had five people rate thesmile intensity of 230 baseballplayers according to photosfeatured in the 1952 BaseballRegister. The researchers useda three-point smile scale: nosmile, half smile (mouth only),and genuine ‘Duchenne’ smile(muscles contracted around themouth and corners of the eyes).

Focusing on the 150 playerswho’d died by the time of thestudy and controlling forextraneous factors such as BMIand marital status, the

researchers found that thosewho were flashing a genuine‘Duchenne smile’ were half aslikely to die in any given yearcompared with non-smilers.Indeed, the average life-span of the 63 deceased non-smilerswas 72.9 years compared with75 years for the 64 partialsmilers and 79.9 years for the23 Duchenne smilers.

A follow-up study wassimilar to the first but observersrated the attractiveness of thesame players rather than theirsmile intensity. Unlike smileintensity, attractiveness bore no relation to longevity.

‘To the extent that smileintensity reflects an underlyingemotional disposition, theresults of this study arecongruent with those of otherstudies demonstrating thatemotions have a positiverelationship with mental health,physical health, and longevity,’the researchers said.

We’re defined in part by wherewe are, the places we go andwhat we do there. We adorn our homes with paraphernaliacaught in the net of life – thephotos, the books and pictures.But what happens when you’rehomeless? How do you defineyour space and identity whenyour home is a public place? To find out, Darrin Hodgetts andcolleagues have conducted anunusual ‘ethnographic’ casestudy with ‘Brett’, a 44-year-oldhomeless man in Auckland.

The researchers gave Bretta camera, asked him to takephotos representative of his lifeand then they conducted two in-depth interviews with him, usingthe photos as springboards.

The clearest finding toemerge was the way that Brettused a portable radio to insulatehimself from the outsideworld – what the researcherscalled an ‘audio cave’. ‘I’ve got asound bubble around me,’ Brettsaid, ‘and I can wander throughthe streets without payingattention to what’s going onaround me.’ At the same time,by consistently listening to hisfavourite station George FM,Brett was able to develop a‘fleeting sense ofcompanionship and “we-ness”with the station’s otherlisteners’, the researchers said.

Brett is a self-confessedloner who avoids contact withother people where possibleand who tries to conceal hishomeless status. He told theresearchers about the places he went that enabled him to do this, including a former gunemplacement with stunning

views of the sea; Judges Baywhere there are free showersand gas barbecues; and in thecity centre, the church,bookshops and libraries. Theseplaces allow Brett to experience‘life as a “normal” person whohas interest in books andreading, or simply escaping thecity to sit and reflect,’ theresearchers said. By contrast,returning to photograph thepublic toilets on Pitt Street wasan ordeal for Brett, remindinghim of his time as a drug addict.

Brett referred to how otherhomeless people spend a lot oftime sitting round talking andhow it [homelessness]psychologically unhinges them.By contrast, the researcherssaid Brett had never ‘losthimself’ to the streets. ‘[H]ismemories, imagination, anddaily practices, including his useof space, provide anchorage toan adaptive sense of self andbelonging.’

The material in this section is taken from the Society’s Research Digest blog atwww.researchdigest.org.uk/blog, and is written by its editor Dr Christian Jarrett.Visit the blog for full coverage, more reports, an archive, comment and more.

This month, make sure you check out the special feature on the bloggers behind theblogs. The Digest caught up with the people behind the increasingly influentialpsychology blogs to find out about their mission, approach and advice for thosethinking of joining them in cyberspace. Read all about it at www.bps.org.uk/bloggers.

Subscribe by RSS or e-mail at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog

Become a fan at www.facebook.com/researchdigest

Follow the Digest editor at www.twitter.com/researchdigest

For a longer life, say cheese!In the April issue of Psychological Science

The homeless man and his audio caveIn the June issue of the British Journal of Social Psychology

Winner!Awards 2010

Winner!wardsA 20 010



Antonov, I., Antonova, I., Kandel, E.R. &Hawkins, R.D. (2003). Activity-dependent presynaptic facilitationand hebbian LTP are both requiredand interact during classicalconditioning in Aplysia. Neuron, 9,135–147.

Bruce, V., Henderson, Z., Greenwood, K.et al. (1999). Verification of faceidentities from images captured onvideo. Journal of Experimental

Psychology: Applied, 5, 339–360.Burton, A.M., Jenkins, R., Hancock,

P.J.B. & White, D. (2005). Robustrepresentations for face recognition:The power of averages. CognitivePsychology, 51, 256–284.

Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C. et al.(2001). DRC: A dual route cascadedmodel of visual word recognition andreading aloud. Psychological Review,108, 204–256.

Galaburda, A., Menard, M. & Rosen, G.(1994). Evidence from aberrantauditory anatomy in developmentaldyslexia. Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, 91, 8010–8013.

Hebb, D.O. (1949). The organization ofbehavior: A neuropsychological theory.New York: Wiley.

Jenkins, R. & Burton, A.M. (2008). 100%accuracy in automatic facerecognition. Science, 319, 435.

Keidel, J.L., Welbourne, S.R. & LambonRalph, M.A. (2010). Solving theparadox of the modular andequipotential brain: Aneurocomputational model of strokevs. slow-growing glioma.Neuropsychologia, doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.02.019.

McCulloch, W. & Pitts, W. (1943). Alogical calculus of the ideasimmanent in nervous activity. Bulletin

Over the last half century or so,artificial intelligence models havefailed to match the flexibility andadaptability of human performance.However, by incorporatingstatistical learning and interactivityinto modern computational modelsin the form of neural networks,psychologists are able to gaininsight into how our minds operateacross a range of cognitive tasks.

This article considers several of these tasks, namely reading, faceprocessing, cognitive developmentand brain injury, in order to give asnapshot of the range of techniquesand questions addressed byresearchers using computationalmodels in psychology.

With the advent of moderncomputing in the 1950s, therewas an enormous amount of

optimism about how quickly andeffectively computers would be able toaccomplish many of the tasks conductedby humans (Turing, 1950). Skills such aslanguage comprehension or visual objectrecognition, which are learned early andalmost effortlessly by human infants wereearly targets for constructing competentmodels, with potentially lucrativeoutcomes in industrial applications.However, almost 60 years later, we arestill waiting for truly effective computermodels that can, for instance, translatebetween languages sensibly, or recognisespeech effectively, or identify facesaccurately.

These large-scale computer modellingefforts have been driven by the aim offinding a model that works, usuallywithout regard to how humans solve a specific task. But the failure of artificialintelligence models to match humanperformance provides us, as psychologists,with insight into the way in which themind is actually solving these tasks. Forexample, speech recognition systems canbecome reasonably accurate when they are tuned to a single voice speaking in a regular way within a fairly constrainedcontext. If one or other of these externalconstraints is not present, then difficultiescan arise. So what does this mean forhuman processing? It means thatadaptability and flexibility with regard tocontextual information is constantly beingutilised by our minds. Clearly, determininghow this adaptation to context is

accomplished – whether it is the context of the speaker’s voice, or the topic ofconversation – is of great importance to understanding the cognitive systemperforming complex tasks such as speechrecognition.

The properties of adaptability andflexibility are evident in computationalsystems that instead of depending on fixed sets of rules, as in early attempts to simulate human behaviour, actuallyincorporate statistical learning andinteractivity in their functioning. Suchproperties are hallmarks of systems inwhich information is distributed andinteracting, and so the metaphor of theneural network, as implemented in theneural structure of the brain, has been anattractive starting point for many currentcomputational models of psychologicalprocesses. Artificial neural networks wereoriginally inspired by the neuralarchitecture of the brain in terms of sets ofinterconnected neurons transmittingsignals via axons, dendrites and synapsesbetween them (McCulloch & Pitts, 1943).In the brain, neurons that are co-activetend to increase the strength of theirinterconnection (Antonov et al., 2003;Hebb, 1949), and so the statistics of theenvironment and the task can beincorporated into the neural system itself.Artificial neural networks, then, instantiatethe computational principle arising fromthe brain’s cellular structure in terms ofreflecting the statistical properties of thetask, by employing many smallinterconnected processing units andadapting the strength of the connectionsbetween these units.

In the remainder of this article weprovide a set of examples of how thisneural network approach to exploring how psychological processes can beimplemented in the brain has revealed a great deal about how our minds operateacross a whole gamut of cognitive tasks.The next two sections provide two cases inwhich our understanding of brain functionhas proceeded in tandem with developingcomputational models of complex tasks:reading and reading impairment, and then

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www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/monaghanhttp://grey.colorado.edu/emergent/index.

php/About_EmergentChurchland, P.S. & Sejnowski, T.J. (1994).

The computational brain. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

Which aspects of the brain’s structureare important for understanding themind’s function?Are there limits for computers inperforming cognitive tasks? Is it amatter of processing ‘power’, or is the type of processing fundamentallydistinct?

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What computers haveshown us about the mindPadraic Monaghan, James Keidel, Mike Burton and Gert Westermann investigate

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visual processing (in particular facerecognition). Then we discuss theadvantage of neural networks in reflectinghuman development, in terms of theadaptability and flexibility in the way in which these models learn. Finally, wereport with more detail a further advantageof this approach to describing andunderstanding impairments topsychological functioning as aconsequence of brain injury.

ReadingThere are many different levels oflanguage structure that can be modelled:from discourse, where topic and style areconsidered, right down to theinterpretation of acoustic events as speechsounds. In this section, we focus on justone level – that of learning to read words.

In order to recognise a word, we needto be able to identify the letters, andconvert the letters into speech sounds. Anearly computational account of how thismay be achieved assumed that our mindsapply a set of rulesabout which lettersmake which sounds.So, the letter ‘b’ isalways pronounced/b/, the letter ‘s’ ispronounced /s/,unless it is followedby ‘h’, in which caseit is pronounced /∫/,and so on. Suchrule-based systemsare evidently useful,and can supportchildren’s readingdevelopment inmany cases, asattested to byphonics training.However, someletters arepronounced inirregular and largelyunpredictable ways, such as the ‘i’ in ‘pint’,which is usually pronounced differently insimilar contexts as in ‘tint’, ‘lint’, ‘mint’,

and so on. To deal with these exceptions to rules, such models proposed in additionthat the reading system also containsword-level representations with a storedpronunciation of the whole word (e.g.Coltheart et al., 2001).

However, an alternative is to considerthat the brain is learning not a set of rulesfor converting letters to sounds, but ratherthe statistics of the relations betweencertain letters or sets of letters, and certainsounds or sets of sounds. There is, then,no distinction between reading anexception word compared to reading a regular word, it is just a matter of thedegree to which the statistical associationsused by the model are regular in formingthe letter-sound mapping. Models thathave employed neural networks to learnthese statistics are more successful inreflecting the graded effects of variouslevels of regularity in spelling–soundcorrespondences in words and nonwords(Zevin & Seidenberg, 2006).

Neural networks can couple thislearning of statistical regularities with

gross anatomicalconstraints in thebrain (e.g. in termsof how visualinformation isintegrated in thereading system) tosolve the problem of how we learn toread. Such modelshave investigatedhow the left andright hemispheredivision has animpact on when and where thevisual informationmust be combined

in order to readeffectively(Monaghan &Shillcock, 2008). Ifthe two halves of the

model do not integrate their visualinformation at an early enough stage, thendyslexic behaviour emerges in the model,


computers and the mind

of Mathematical Biophysics, 7, 115–133.Monaghan, P. & Shillcock, R.C. (2008).

Hemispheric dissociation and dyslexiain a computational model of reading.Brain and Language, 107, 185–193.

Rogers, T.T., Lambon Ralph, M.A.,Garrard, P. et al. (2004). The structureand deterioration of semanticmemory: A neuropsychological andcomputational investigation.Psychological Review, 111, 205–235.

Turing, A. (1950). Computing machineryand intelligence. Mind, 59, 433–460.

Zevin, J.D. & Seidenberg, M.S. (2006).Consistency effects and individualdifferences in nonword naming: Acomparison of current models.Journal of Memory and Language, 54,145–160.

We are still waiting for truly effectivecomputer models

consistent with accounts of hemisphericdissociation in some dyslexics (Galaburdaet al., 1994).

The model can also implement other accounts of developmental disorderresulting in dyslexia, for example bysimulating accounts of dyslexia in terms of disturbance of visual input, orphonological impairments (see Monaghan& Shillcock, 2008, for a review). Thebenefits of computational modelling meanthat the different natures of theseimpairments and their behaviouralmanifestations can be explicity compared.

Face processingThe study of face recognition has alwaysbeen closely associated with modelling.This is partly for the standardpsychological reasons (modelling helpstheoretical development) and partlybecause of the desire to automate facerecognition for security and surveillance.Engineers aiming to build workingsystems have to solve the same problemas human observers: how to associate twopictures of the same person, when thosepictures may be superficially verydifferent.

In fact, neither problem is solved. Brainimaging and electrophysiological studieshave identified some of the neural systemsinvolved in recognising faces, but how thisis achieved remains a mystery. On theengineering side, newspapers continue to announce pilot schemes to implementautomatic face recognition to enhancesecurity (e.g. on high streets, banks andairports), but fail to report the results ofthese schemes because they never live upto the early expectation.

This is an area in which engineeringcould take more notice than it does ofpsychological results. At first pass, theproblem of face recognition is simplystated: We need to store a set of photos in a database. We then need to take a newphoto of someone (for example at a bordercrossing) and match it to our database. If we have a sufficiently clever matchingalgorithm, it should be possible toestablish whether the person is in thedatabase, and if so who it is. However, itturns out that this is a very difficult task,and one which humans cannot do reliably.In the last 10 years it has become clearfrom a great many studies, that viewers are surprisingly bad at matching twophotos of an unfamiliar person, even whenthe photos are of very good quality, andtaken minutes apart (e.g. Bruce et al.,1999). We are perhaps misled by our owncompetence here. It turns out that we areextremely good at recognising faces whenthey are familiar to us, and can do so even




in severely degraded images. This expertiseperhaps leads us to the false conclusionthat we are good at face recognitiongenerally. We are not.

Recently, studies have begun to ask whether it is possible to re-cast theproblem of automatic face recognition to be consistent with human capabilities.Instead of concentrating on ever moresophisticated matching algorithms forcomparing two individual photos, analternative is to instead build into acomputer something which capturesfamiliarity in human perception (Burton et al., 2005). This approach explores thepossibility that automatic recognition maybe improved if, instead of saving individualphotos of a person, an abstractrepresentation is stored, derived from a statistical analysis of many instances. In fact, computing a very simple averageappears to capture this ‘learning’ very well,and can lead to very substantialimprovements in automatic facerecognition (Jenkins & Burton, 2008).

DevelopmentIn the past decade a new field ofdevelopmental cognitive neuroscience hasemerged that makes links between braindevelopment and cognitive developmentin infants and children. Computationalmodelling has made a vital contributionto this field by providing explanations of how changes in the brain can lead to changes in a child’s behaviours andabilities. A large part of developmentalpsychology is about investigating at whatage children have which abilities, andarguably the main challenge is then toexplain why and how these abilitieschange and develop, that is, to identifythe mechanisms underlying cognitivechange. Connectionist models, which are(loosely) inspired by the functioning ofbrain neural networks, are ideally suitedto exploring these mechanisms.Candidates for aspects of braindevelopment with relevance tobehavioural change are changes in howindividual neurons process signals, thewiring up of brain networks according to experience, and the integration ofdifferent brain systems into interactingnetworks that affect each other’sfunctioning.

Of particular interest is thedevelopment of categorisation abilities inyoung infants using modelling techniques.Infant categorisation is often studied bypresenting pictures on a computer screenand measuring how much time infantsspend looking at each picture. Theunderlying assumption is that infants looklonger at novel, unusual stimuli than at

familiar ones. In a typical familiarisationstudy infants are shown a sequence ofpictures of objects from one category (e.g.cats) until their looking time decreases.Then they are shown a new object fromthe familiarised category, such as a newcat, and an object from a different category,such as a dog. In this case researchers havefound that even three- to four-month-oldinfants indeed look longer at the dog,indicating that they have formed acategory for cats that excludes dogs. The looking behaviour of infants has been modelled in neural networks byusing models that have to learn to re-generate on the output side what they seeon the input side. The idea here is that themodel, like the baby, builds an internalrepresentation of the observed object, andthe more unusual this object is, the longerthe looking time, and the longer it takes to train the model to recreate an accuraterepresentation of the input.

Four-month-olds have been shown to base their category formation on thefeatures of objects (e.g. shape of the head,tail or legs), but 10-month-olds are alsosensitive to which features occur together(e.g. a specific shape of head with aspecific tail). Therefore 10-month-oldsfound drawings of animals that containedpreviously seen features, but in novelcombinations, surprising, whereas four-month olds did not. Modelling researchshows that a change in the way neuronsprocess information could explain thisdevelopment. Visual neurons in the brainhave an associated receptive field, which is the area of the visual space in which a presented stimulus activates the neuron.These receptive fields shrink with age,possibly based on visual experience. Byincluding this change in a neural networkmodel of object categorisation the modelprovided a precise account of how changesin neural processing can explainbehavioural change during the first year of life.

Brain injuryThe principles of adaptability andflexibility of the brain’s functioning areobserved par excellence following braininjury. If you wished to understand how a computer works, taking off the cover andsimply watching it run could only tell youso much. Instead, you would be betterserved by removing individual parts andobserving the effects. Unfortunately,though, computers do not reactparticularly kindly to such treatment. The function of a computer is very oftenan all-or-nothing proposition: one minuteyou are typing up a document and thenext you are confronted with your chosen

operating system’s method of telling youhow horribly wrong things have gone.

Compare this with the brain’s reactionto damage. At the most general level, weare struck by its ability to maintain asignificant degree of function in the face of extreme injury. Further, theimpairments that result are neither randomnor a simple matter of on versus off, as in a computer. Instead, the specific patternsthat result from different types of damagetell us a lot about normal brain function.One of the key insights of connectionistmodelling has been how systems withdistributed representations account for thevarying patterns of cognitive impairmentobserved in different patient groups.

For instance, Rogers et al. (2004)explored the pattern of impairment thatresults from semantic dementia, asyndrome associated with bilateral anteriortemporal lobe atrophy. These patientsexhibit a progressive loss of knowledgeconcerning objects and their properties,and this loss follows characteristic patternsincluding an initial loss of specificcharacteristics of objects (e.g. that a camelhas a hump), and overextension of generalproperties of a category to all members(e.g. drawing four legs on a bird). Aftertraining and introduction of damage, themodel displayed patterns of damage acrossmultiple tasks highly similar to thoseobserved in semantic dementia patients.The insight available from modelling thisbehaviour was that information aboutword meanings was stored in a distributedmanner such that meanings graduallyeroded as damage increased.

Alternatively, localised damage cansometimes result in rather selectiveimpairments; for instance damage to theright fusiform gyrus is associated withprosopagnosia, or ‘face-blindness’. Thespecificity of these deficits, coupled withthe apparent inability for other brainregions to fully restore normal function,has led to a modular view of neuralarchitecture. On this view, the brain iscomposed of a set of domain-specificencapsulated processors that efficientlyperform single tasks, a theory that seemsto fit quite well with the effects of acutedamage such as stroke.

Recent investigations into theconsequences of slowly expanding braindamage have also benefited fromconnecting brain damage to patients’behaviour via insights available fromcomputational modelling. The sequelae of low-grade glioma (LGG), which areslow-growing brain tumours, has greatlyexpanded our understanding of thepotential plasticity in the adult brain, and how these can alter neural structure.Though LGG often cause damage equal to




or greater in extent than that observed instroke, they typically have only a minimaleffect on cognitive functioning. This leadsto a seeming paradox: if the adult brain isso plastic, as observed in LGG, why isrecovery from stroke often so poor?

Recently, a connectionist modeldesigned to account for the effects of acuteversus gradual damage to the brain hastackled this question (Keidel et al., 2010).There are three key factors posited toaccount for the greatly varying cognitiveand behavioural outcomes observed indifferent types of brain lesion: I the age at which the damage occurs; I the speed at which the damage

progresses; and I the existing pattern of connectivity

in the brain.

To illustrate how these principles interact,Keidel et al. (2010) employed a noveldual-stream architecture, in which twoparallel subnetworks had full internalconnectivity but only sparse cross-connectivity. This enabled the model todevelop modular processing within eachsubnetwork but also with the facility todistribute processing across the twosubnetworks. The age of the model was implemented in terms of graduallyreducing its flexibility to subtly adapt its performance. This was achieved byincreasing entrenchment in the model’sprocessing, by biasing the model toproduce binary (0 or 1) values at themodel’s output instead of a more gradedrange of outputs. Each of thesubnetworks was trained on a single task,forming mappings between certain inputsand outputs to represent the essence of a range of tasks, such as recognition of

words orrecognition of faces fromvisual input.For the model,there was nooverlapbetween thetwo tasks, sothe inputs andoutputs weredistinct ineach case.

Because of the sparsecross-connections,

it would bepossible for the two subnetworks to share resourcesin solving the twosimultaneous tasks.But this is not what

happened. At the end of the initial trainingphase, before impairing the model, the fullmodel composed of the two subnetworkshad mastered both of the training tasks toa level of 100 per cent correct.Interestingly, removal of all of the sparsecross-connections (equivalent to about 25 per cent of the model’s representationalcapacity as measured by number of linksbetween units; note these links were notremoved for the simulations describedbelow) had no effect on networkperformance. Thus, a form of emergentmodularity resulted in the model, eventhough the possibility for interdependenceexisted in the model’s structure.

To see how this might help account forthe varying recovery profiles in stroke andLGG, Keidel et al. (2010) introduced twotypes of damage into the model. For thestroke simulation, they simply removedthe resources within one subnetwork thatformed the mapping between input andoutput representations, meaning that theinput and output layers could onlycommunicate via the other unlesionedsubnetwork, using the sparse cross-connections. After significant retraining,the stroke simulations were only able torecover to a performance level of about 70 per cent correct on the lesioned task,whilst performance on the unlesioned taskremained perfect. Thus, as is observed inthe patient population, acute damageyielded a specific deficit that could only bepartially ameliorated through relearning, asin cases of strokes affecting the rightfusiform gyrus resulting in prosopagnosia.

To simulate the effects of LGG, Keidelet al. (2010) introduced a gradualdecrement in the resources available tomap between inputs and outputs in one of

the subnetworks. This manipulation hadthe effect of slowly reducing the resourcesto zero, at which point they could have nocontribution to processing in the model.Unlike the result of the stroke simulation,the LGG simulation was able to adapt tothe gradual damage, and at no time didperformance dip below 90 per cent. Afterextended relearning, it was possible toremove the entire lesioned hidden layerwith only a negligible effect onperformance. The computational modelthus simulated the effect of instantaneousversus gradual impairment to brain tissue,highlighting that LGG is less catastrophicin terms of loss of function due to theinteractivity and distributional nature ofprocessing in the brain.

ConclusionWhat each of these different examples of computational approaches has incommon is the property of interactivity as a fundamental for brain functioning,which is reflected in connectionist modelsof the brain’s processing. Interactionsincrease the complexity of the system, but also provide great benefits in terms ofadapting to novel circumstances, whetherthose are externally imposed by theenvironment, or internally generated, in terms of brain damage.

Though we are a long way fromachieving the ultimate aim of simulatinghuman performance in all its complexities,we hope that this snapshot has shown howcomputer models that incorporate aspectsof human processing into their structureand representations have providedenormous insight into the way the humanmind processes information.

Padraic Monaghanis Professor of Cognition atLancaster [email protected]

I James Keidelis a Research Officer at Bangor [email protected]

I Mike Burtonis Professor of Psychology at theUniversity of [email protected]

I Gert Westermannis Professor in Psychology at OxfordBrookes [email protected]

Haemorrhagic stroke damage. Coloured magnetic resonanceangiography (MRA) scan of the brain of a 68-year-old woman twoyears after she suffered from a ruptured aneurysm (purple). At themost general level, we are struck by the brain’s ability to maintaina significant degree of function in the face of extreme injury.


power in psychoanalytic relationships –published as The Ethics of Psychoanalysis(Szasz, 1965) – is central to his thinkingand stands complementary to theassertions that mental illness is a myth. In this Szasz effectively provides a practicalguide on how to ensure a level playingfield in psychotherapeutic relationships,to the benefit of both parties. He is honestand open enough to explicitly explore therole that money may play in distortingtherapeutic means and ends. As such, itnot only stands the test of time but standssquarely against the numerous vestedinterests, both pharmaceutical-financialand professional, which dominate themental health industry past and present

Anti-psychiatry or pro-consent?Szasz is not ‘anti’-psychiatry. He advocatesthe right to agree consensual contractualrelations of any kind, includingconsensual psychiatry if that is whatsuitably informed people want. He hasproposed, for example, the use ofadvanced psychiatric directives wherebypeople could agree to accept or refusespecific interventions to be made ‘on theirbehalf’ in the event of their becomingextremely distressed and ‘irrational’ infuture. Such ideas have unfortunatelybeen rejected outright by leading figuresin both psychiatry and medical ethics,and accordingly Szasz sees littlepossibility of any kind of consensualpsychiatry until the use of coercion,whether explicit or tacit, is relinquished.

As psychiatry continues to functionfor the most part as an extension of thecriminal justice system, Szasz asserts thatpsychiatry in its current form must beabolished. This would require a concertedchallenge to its support structures,premised as they are on the notions of behaviour as disease, the fear ofdangerousness and the necessity formedical treatment under the guise ofprotecting the individual from his orherself. The championing of the latternotion in particular owes much to anignorance of its origins. A careful reading

Only after we abandon the pretencethat mind is brain and that mentaldisease is brain disease can we beginthe honest study of human behaviourand the means people use to helpthemselves and others cope with thedemands of living (Szasz, 2007a,p.149).

Fifty years ago American Psychologistpublished a seminal article by theHungarian-born psychoanalyst and

psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, ‘The myth ofmental illness’ (Szasz, 1960). The thesiswas elaborated at length in a book of thesame name a year later (Szasz, 1961). As the decade got into full swing, Szasz’scritique of psychiatric theory and practicewas herded into the same conceptualbasket as the musings of Scottishpsychiatrist R.D. Laing, and his erstwhilefriend and collaborator David Cooper. Thequite different ideas of these men came tobe bracketed inappropriately under therubric of ‘anti-psychiatry’ – an expressioncoined by Cooper though disclaimed byLaing and rejected outright by Szasz.

Since then biological psychiatry hasdeveloped a stranglehold on research,teaching and practice in the field of‘mental health’, and Szasz’s opposition to psychiatry and the basis for it has beenmislocated in the art and culture of theday, its relevance for today denied. Szasz’sview has become viewed by many as asupposed child of its time – a componentin the social manufacture of the so-calledanti-establishment Swinging Sixties. To let

such misapprehension pass unchallengedinto the history of the behaviouralsciences would be a serious error, and Szasz for his part has constantlyendeavoured to set the record straight.

First it must be said that Szasz’sinsights into the shortcomings ofconventional psychiatry pre-date the1960s by some considerable margin. In a brief autobiographical sketch Szaszmakes clear that the absurdity of psychiatricfictions had dawned on him long beforeFellini’s masterpiece was highlighting theshallowness of La Dolce Vita:

‘Everything I had learned and thoughtabout mental illness, psychiatry, andpsychoanalysis – from my teenageyears, through medical school, andmy psychiatric and psychoanalytictraining – confirmed my view thatmental illness is a fiction; thatpsychiatry, resting on force and fraudis social control, and thatpsychoanalysis – properly conceived –has nothing to do with illness ormedicine or treatment’ (2004, p.22).

Szasz graduated in medicine in 1944,having migrated to the US from his nativeHungary in 1938, a fugitive from thelooming menace of Nazism. He undertooka psychiatric residency and trained inpsychoanalysis. The appeal ofpsychoanalysis, besides its intellectual and interpersonal attractions, lay in itsostensibly consensual and contractualnature. Less well known than his otherworks, his dissection of the nature of


Laing, R.D. (1960). The divided self.London: Tavistock.

Laing, R.D. & Esterson, A.E. (1964). Sanitymadness and the family. London:Tavistock.

Mullan, B. (1995). Mad to be normal:Conversations with R.D.Laing. London:Free Association.

Petit, P. (2002). To reach the clouds.London: Faber and Faber.

Schaler, J. (Ed.) (2004). Szasz under fire:

The psychiatric abolitionist faces hiscritics. Chicago: Open Court.

Szasz, T. (1960). The myth of mentalillness. American Psychologist, 15,13–118.

Szasz, T. (1961). The myth of mentalillness. New York: Harper & Row.

Szasz, T. (1965). The ethics ofpsychoanalysis. Syracuse, NY:Syracuse University Press.

Szasz, T. (2001). Pharmacracy: Medicine

and politics in America. London:Praeger.

Szasz, T. (2002). Liberation by oppression:A comparative study of slavery andpsychiatry. New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction.

Szasz, T. (2004). An autobiographicalsketch. In J. Schaler (Ed.) Szasz underfire. Chicago: Open Court.

Szasz, T. (2007a). Coercion as cure: Acritical history of psychiatry. New

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Szasz, T. (2007b). The medicalization of

everyday life: Selected essays.Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Szasz, T. (2008). Debunkingantipsychiatry: Laing, law, andLargactil. Current Psychology, 27,79–101.

Szasz, T. (2009). Antipsychiatry: Quackerysquared. Syracuse: SyracuseUniversity Press.

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Madness, myth andmedicine Ron Roberts on the continuing relevance of Thomas Szasz, now in his 91st year

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of Szasz’s historical analysis of the originsof the insanity defence in 17th-centuryEngland goes some way to clarifyingwhere behavioural scientists got the ideafrom that people of ‘unsound mind’ werenot responsible for their actions andcould not be held accountable for them.In Coercion as Cure, he writes

With suicide defined as a species of murder, the persons sitting injudgment of self killers had the dutyto punish them. Since punishingsuicide required doing injustice toinnocent parties…the wives and minorchildren of the deceased – eventuallythe task proved to be an intolerableburden. In the seventeenth century,men sitting on coroners’ juries beganto recoil against desecrating thecorpse and dispossessing thesuicide’s dependants of their meansof support. However, their religiousbeliefs precluded repeal of the lawspunishing the crime. Their onlyrecourse was to evade thelaws; The doctrine that theself-slayer is non composmentis and hence notresponsible for his actaccomplished this task(Szasz, 2007a, p.99)

And so a social practice becamereified into an imaginarybiological disease processravaging through the brains of its unfortunate victims,necessitating psychiatricintervention!

The label of ‘anti-psychiatry’that continues to be attached toSzasz is one which he has beenat pains to condemn (Szasz,2009), used as it is to stultifyand nullify any criticism ofcontemporary psychiatry. WhileLaing saw himself as ‘essentially on thesame side’ as Szasz (Mullan, 1995, p.202),Szasz sees considerable distance betweenthem, for a number of reasons. Perhaps atthe forefront of these Laing was known tohave forcibly drugged one of his patients(Szasz, 2008) and for all his eloquenceand insight into human misery hiswritings do not in principle condemn the forced treatment or incarceration ofpeople against their will on psychiatricgrounds. Finally whilst The Divided Self(Laing, 1960) and Sanity Madness and theFamily (Laing & Esterson, 1964) amongstother outpourings proclaimed theintelligibility of going mad within ahuman rather than biological framework,Laing did not reject outright the notion of mental illness, which in Szasz’s viewremains at best a metaphor.

Szasz has throughout his career stoodfirmly to his principles and steadfastlyeschewed psychiatric practice in anenvironment where people have beendeprived of their liberty. He has onoccasion appeared in court both torepresent individuals deprived of theirliberty and to uphold the principle ofcriminal responsibility in murder caseswhere those accused have sought to evadeit through the insanity defence (see Szasz,2007b, chapter 13 in particular). Suchconsistent challenges to institutionalpsychiatry have been made at someprofessional cost. Szasz has not simplybeen the recipient of fierce criticism fromthe psychiatric fraternity, who feelbetrayed by his actions, but has alsoendured attempts to limit his academicfreedom. In the aftermath of thepublication of The Myth of Mental Illness,for example, attempts were made to banhim from teaching at the state hospitalmedical school – citing his beliefs as

‘proof’ of his ‘incompetence as apsychiatrist’ (Schaler, 2004, p.xix).

Some confusion about Szasz’s workhas arisen through the quite differentpolitical cultures within which it isinterpreted, even by those who opposeinstitutional psychiatry in its currentincarnation. His work has been claimedand repudiated by those on both the ‘left’and ‘right’ – deemed a liberal in somequarters and a fascist in others – with theclaims and counterclaims rooted in thepredilections of the critics for differentconfigurations of state power. Europeanintellectual tradition on the left, forexample, clings to a belief and a desirethat state power can be harnessed for the good. This means that while Szasz’sattacks on psychiatric authority areapplauded, his admonitions against the

‘therapeutic state’ (Szasz, 2001, 2002),with its merging of psychiatric and statepower on the one hand and private andpublic health on the other, are glossedover. In truth, if such a thing can be said,Szasz’s ideas belong to neither the rightnor the left. His work challenges andquestions all operations of organisedpower from the state downwards, as longas they are used to crush and oppresshuman freedom. His work impliesunanswered questions concerning theforms of community and socialorganisation which people can harness forthe individual and common good in orderto enable them to deal elegantly with theinsatiable demands of living.

AddendumWhile preparing this article I encounteredPhilippe Petit’s (2002) wondrous accountof his high-wire walk across the twintowers of the World Trade Center in

1974. Immediately after performinghis ‘artistic crime of the century’ Petitwas arrested and subject topsychiatric examination. Petit wasjudged to be sane, but the outcome of the psychiatric interview is lessrevealing than the fact thatpsychiatrists were willing to play theirpart in a pseudo-medical interventionprovoked by nothing more than socialrule breaking of the highestimaginative order. It struck me thatPetit – an imaginative, unusual andbeguiling figure – exemplifies muchthat modern psychiatry stands inantipathy to. Petit cares not for therules and regulations that structureand govern the lives of citizens andlives, in his terms, only to dream‘projects that ripen in the clouds’

(Petit, 2002, p.6). There can be littledoubt that psychiatry is an enterprise thatis engineered to destroy these – that itcannot tolerate idiosyncrasies of thought,whether grandiose or mundane. Petitsucceeded in his outlandish and highlyimprobable quest – but why should onehave to achieve outlandish success to beembraced by society and enjoy the rightto pop one’s head in the clouds or spendthe ‘afternoons in treetops’? Szasz’s effortsover the years can be seen in many lights,but without doubt he has toiled on behalfof the dream of human accountability andresponsibility, for the freedom to bedifferent and to take charge of one’s life,free from the machinations of state-sponsored psychiatric interference.


looking back

I Ron Roberts is a Senior Lecturer inPsychology at Kingston [email protected]

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The Psychologist, August 2010

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